devotion

I want to have a lasting experience of God... Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time, but I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.

The true mystic is not a devotee lost in ecstatic communion with the One, or a reclusive saint who avoids others. The true mystic lives alongside other people - coming and going, eating and sleeping, buying and selling, marrying and chatting - but not for a moment does he forget God.

He decided then that he would love her forever no matter what came to pass. It was not so much a matter of deciding as accepting the inevitability of it. It made him feel better, though he felt perturbed, too, worried that this kiss was wrong. But from his point of view, at fourteen years old, their love was entirely unavoidable. It had started on the day they’d clung to his glass box and kissed in the sea, and now it must go on forever. He felt certain of this.